


The Next Dragon

by TLvop



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Community: fma_ladyfest, Gen, Pre-Canon, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There will be a time, soon, with the Chan name is itself reason to proffer respect.</p><p>Mei Chan, pre-canon, Brotherhood/manga-verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Dragon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElspethVimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElspethVimes/gifts).



In the court of the Emperor, generous and strong, peach blossoms are falling.

The procession of children crushes them under foot, and the scent permeates the air. The nineteenth princess breathes it in, breathes it out, and tries to ignore how the smell mingles with the incense and body odors of her sibling-rivals. The bearcat tucked into her sleeve sneezes, but no one turns — Xiu Wang, sixteenth princess, is too refined to look behind her at a member of the Chan clan and Nuo Ma, eighteenth, is too in awe of their surroundings. Though, Mei Chan thinks, the ten-year-old princess should be accustomed to them already.

It is the time for the spring court, the moment to make an impression on the Emperor. If he chooses to have her stay in his court for the season, she will have a chance to further the prospects of her clan, and a chance to roam free in the largest alkahestric libraries in Xing. She deserves it, she knows, but she will be the thirty-first child to try to impress him, and he can curry no favor by gifting her so.

Still, she will try.

The children gather in nine careful columns in front of the Emperor seated on his throne. She is in the furthest right column; behind her are the Emperor's children by concubine. She sometimes wonders if the Emperor mourns that now that his children are old enough to kill, they die faster than they are born; that he has never had forty five living heirs to make his lines complete.

They bow as one to the Emperor, proud and worthy, though they only touch their foreheads to the surface of the court — here swept clean of even peach blossoms — three times, as his children.

In her sleeve, Xiao Mei is quiet. As the seneschal begins to speak in the dialect she only ever hears spoken in earnest in court (though she has had it drilled into her during lessons at home), Mei Chan squeezes her eyes against the tears that threaten at the thought that her dearest sister is the only one who will never be recognized as such.

\--

The heart of Xing is its libraries, according to Mei Chan's court-appointed tutors. The tutors accompanied her back to the court from her clan, to find new resources in the capital and shepherd her in the customs of the court. No one else has come; there is no one else to spare. Mei Chan spends the mornings, in this week of preparations and festivities, studying alkahestry. She spends her early afternoons practicing it.

Her late afternoons are reserved for formal gatherings, or meetings with her lady mother, or the carefully navigated interactions with her siblings who for this week are not trying to kill her. No one has tried assassination during a Children's Week for 250 years; not since Ru Chan brought repudiation on his clan for trying to kill the woman who would become Emperor. He died decades before she ruled, but the Emperors of Xing have long memories, and the memory of the land is longer. The Chan clan has not yet recovered.

Her lady mother knows little of alkahestry, though she knows much of politics, and more of young women. A pleasure Mei Chan tries not to savor too much, so that losing it will not cut so deep, is to sit in the fading afternoon light and dissect the statuses of her rivals at court, to share the events that have happened at home, to watch her lady mother demonstrate points with her long, expressive hands, to learn to unravel the quiet jokes woven into her sentences. Mei Chan thinks she will never be as well-spoken as her mother, with her rich alto voice, or as beautiful. But, then, Mei Chan will never need to curry favor for her clan as a royal wife of the Emperor (the same characters that mean "royal wife" mean "hostage daughter," though they have not been called that since the time of the three Emperors). She will be Emperor herself, or she will be dead. She will not compete so cautiously that whoever wins will not feel threatened by her existence, but for the sake of her clan she must not die – so she will win. Every child she has will be Chan, and every single one will be fought over with the fervent delicacy the Emperor is at the center of. There will be a time, soon, when the Chan name is itself a reason to proffer respect.

In the evening, she reads by low-lamplight the books her mother gives her to practice her Amestrian, so that she might not only speak it like all her rivals, but know it as the people of Amestris do; the books she has given her since Mei Chan first told her that she wants to be alkahest and azoth, to dissolve Amestrian alchemy and alkahestry together inside her, to make them one. Alkahestry heals the spirit, and alchemy fortifies it—it is said, even, that Amestris has learned the life-lengthening secrets of the Western Sage.

The books are about many people, though Mei Chan's favorites are about alchemists even though they do not touch on the theory. Her mother gently calls the books "safe to let wives read," and Mei Chan doesn't know what that means, though she knows her mother is not allowed access to the royal libraries filled to the brim with alkahestric texts. She likes the books her mother gives her, though; likes to dream of the lives of the alchemists of far-away Amestris. Xiao Mei reads them perched on her shoulder, and when Mei Chan finds her face growing warm at the content, Xiao Mei occasionally hides herself in Mei Chan's loose hair.

They never speak about the books, her lady mother and she, though they speak in Amestrian regularly, and Mei Chan is glad; Xiao Mei would have nowhere to hide when her hair is tied up in braids.

\--

Mei Chan's hair is pulled back into braids, more intricate than the ones she usually wears, decorated with pearl and peony. She and the other daughters, as well as the elder ten sons, are only watching their brothers today.

Later in the week, the Emperor-father will speak to each of them, for the few minutes he has free. Now he sits, and watches the boys through age-heavy eyes. Mei Chan knows that the Emperor, eternal, is old and ill—but it is always a shock to feel the dip in his health when she his near him; the weakness in his bones.

He and his physicians hide it well, but not well enough.

Mei Chan watches her brothers as she thinks this, analyzes their choices for what they will communicate to their Emperor. They are for the most part predictable.

Qiang Tan, eleventh, poetry. Ling Yao, twelfth, martial skill. Zhi Gao, thirteenth, alkahestry.

All important talents for an Emperor, but an interesting choice of what to showcase; each says a specific thing about her rivals. The twenty-second through twenty-fourth princes are barely old enough to speak, and so will not showcase at all. The others—those younger than Zhi Gao, but old enough to make themselves known—instead give note to their writing skill, and their way with numbers.

What that says is _I will never be Emperor; I am too young and unskilled, and you are too old. Appoint me as a minister before you die_.  
Some of the older princes, the fifth and the eighth, also desired once to be ministers instead of Emperor. But both of them have already been appointed their roles, and their demonstrations yesterday were merely tradition.

Mei Chan feels quiet triumph, as she always does when she can remove another heir from the list of those who she must fight—or when one of her rivals removes them for her.

\--

Mei Chan does not showcase for the Emperor, this season. She has practiced, and she has meditated; she has watched her sisters who went the day before her with studying eyes. Xiao Mei has kept her time, has corrected her form.

But the Emperor does not come to see. She stands, with the other girls, waiting for their Emperor-father, feeling her calves start to slowly cramp.

After an hour, she and her sisters who will show martial talent or alkahestry start to stretch, as quietly and dignified as they can.  
Then they hear: the Emperor is sick, he is very sick.

He is sicker than Mei Chan can heal, or any other healer; the best can only postpone, have only been postponing. He is like a sink at the dragon's heart, pulling at the senses of his children, trained to read the dragon's pulse. He is dying.

The seneschal comes to speak to the children, gathered where they were to meet their Emperor-father, careful to leave walking space between each other, but far less organized than the day they arrived. They are surrounded by the members of their house, and their lady mothers. Mei Chan stands to the side, in her fighting clothes, Xiao Mei on her shoulder. Her lady mother's long fingers twist and twist again, around each other, though occasionally she murmurs to Mei Chan that the Emperor has taken sick several times over this past season and he is sure to heal.

"I speak for the Emperor, noble and wise," begins the seneschal, slow and grave. The hushed crowd falls into complete silence. "He says he has found a way to choose between his children, at the last.

"Bring to him immortality, such that Xing shall never fall."

There is a stunned moment, as they stare at the elderly official. Xiao Mei clings to Mei Chan's collar.

Mei Chan sees Ling Yao straighten his sleeve with a small and careful wrist- _flick_ , and she feels something in her settle.

To win immortality will be less of a challenge than to win the Emperor's favor. Mei Chan knows where she can find immortality.

\--

Outside the court, peach blossoms rot; inside the court, the Emperor slowly dies.

**Author's Note:**

> My betas are ryfkah and genarti, without whom I seriously would be in a muddle. <3\. (For more than just beta reasons, but, relevantly: beta reasons.) Thanks to Orlando for the awesome prompt! Also, thanks to snowynight for advice on what Xing would have <3!
> 
> Note: Some of my numbering of the princes/princesses might be off, sorry. I tried to fix a mis-numbering on my part, and I'm not sure if I just confused matters more.


End file.
